


Mycroft Frankenstein

by mphelmsman



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dark, Gen, M/M, Sad, Tumblr: letswritesherlock, Unrequited Love, broken!sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mphelmsman/pseuds/mphelmsman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft faces the same fear as Mary Shelley’s Fictional Doctor</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mycroft Frankenstein

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd or brit-picked although if anyone would like to help with that please let me know.   
> For Let's Write Sherlock challenge 6 on tumblr. I'm not sure I got it quite right but I gave it a shot.
> 
> My first fic in a long time and my first in this fandom so please let me know what you think. Con crit adored!

Mycroft looked at the simple, elegant invitation held out to him by a languid hand, "You always told me caring was not an advantage, brother. How glad you must be to be proven true.....again." Sherlock's tone should have been vicious, confrontational but it wasn't. It was ... uninterested. The elder Holmes would have thought he was drugged but even his keen gaze could see that was not the case.

"Sherlock, you've been gone three years. That is a long time....too long for someone to stay grieving for a friend." Mycroft knew he would have to handle this very carefully. He had worked closer with his brother while he destroyed Moriaty's criminal web than he had ever done before and in all that time he had known, utterly known that he was at most a place holder.

"Yes, I suppose so." Sherlock turned the card around in his hands. They were such different hands now, no longer primarily that of a scientist or a musician, the callouses now spoke to Mycroft's gaze of an operative. Sherlock’s eyes also no longer held that spark of passion and curiosity that had burned so bright all his life. Mycoft would have shuddered if he allowed himself such things. He knew he was looking into the gaze of a man who no longer cared if he lived or died.

"You could go back now; everything is in place for your resurrection." Mycroft said as he sternly told himself not to vary his tone, not to allow the tightness in his chest to transmit by a variation in his breathing pattern. "You could be back in 221B tomorrow and I only received the invitation last week. Sherlock, "he said in his best official voice, "The date of Dr. Watson's wedding is not for six months. Much may happen in that time."

"No," again the voice was distant, totally void of emotion. "He doesn't need the Work anymore, obviously, its best he doesn't get tempted into it again. He will have a good life, the life he deserves." Mycroft noticed that his younger brother could not even say the Doctor's name. Never before had that happened; many times Mycroft had sat by the bedside of his brother when hospitalized for an injury or even simple self-neglect and the first name on his lips had always been * John*. The first face he had looked for, always, that of the former army doctor that had become the center of Sherlock's world.

Mycroft had often wondered during those times if he should have included the doctor in the operation if only to help his brother keep a hold on his sanity. It would have been easy enough, those first months; Dr. Watson had shown all the symptoms of sever clinical depression. It would have been simple to have staged his suicide and reunited the pair. But every time he had told himself that Sherlock would have been less effective; caring was not an advantage and caring was what had gotten his brother into this situation in the first place. Instead, he had made sure that his brother received all the training he had needed to be a more effective and ruthless covert operative. And that is what sat before him now; a field operative, when the last time he had beheld his brother Mycroft could have only seen the consulting detective doing whatever he needed to get back home.

It occurred to Mycroft suddenly that home sometimes meant more a person than a place. "What will you do now?" He asked, trying desperately to ignore the dryness of his mouth.

"Whatever. I'm sure there are assignments that one of the agencies you work with need doing."

"Perhaps some rest first?" Mycroft tried. Maybe if he could keep his brother in London he might change his mind. Surely, the temptation to see his friend would be too much.

"Nonsense. There's no use letting someone of my skill set lie idle." Sherlock cocked his head at his brother, "Unless you'd rather I find someone else to keep me occupied."

Mycroft swallowed as he thought of all the things his brother had learned that were not part of operative training. The uses of torture, assassination, the interior structure of criminal organizations. If nothing else, as long as he was Sherlock's handler perhaps he could keep him in the gray area of government sanctioned work. If not there was no telling what this weapon in his brother's skin could do or become. "Very well. There is a situation in America that..."

"No, not America. There is nothing there that would need my skill set. I'm sure Russia or....Afghanistan would allow me to be most useful." Afghanistan, of course, what governments were doing there skimmed the very edge of international law and sometimes a great deal over. And of course what Sherlock would be doing would protect British soldiers. <Soldier's like John Watson _. >_

"Yes, well I'm sure you could be quite useful."

Sherlock dropped the invitation into a waste paper basket like it was totally irrelevant and stood his entire body and expression so different that Mycroft could barely think of this man as his brother. He was now an operative, a tool to be used by the British government or whoever else offered, nothing more. "I'll make contact when I reach Pakistan, usual codes. And Mycoft, “The sharp piercing gaze pinned him to his seat and the eyes were those of a man without the smallest scrap of mercy. “If you contact him, if you impede his plans in any way or even let him hear a whisper of my continued existence I will know." The rest went unspoken but Mycroft was utterly sure in that moment that he would not live beyond a day after crossing this man. He knew Sherlock's pervasive network in Britain and especially London. He himself had helped put the finishing touches on it in the last three years. But they weren't his people.....their loyalties were utterly with the operative who stood before him.

"Understood." Mycroft tried to keep as calm as possible but he knew he could no longer hide it from his brother's keen eyes. He saw the flare of satisfaction in them, muted like all else had been but still present. Then he simply disappeared himself; no hint of the flair that had been the detectives trademark exit or entrance in him anymore.

Mycroft poured himself a brandy with shaking fingers and though that this is what Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when confronted by his own creation. Sherlock had been an ongoing project for him as he tried to mold and protect him through the years; worrying that the world would destroy the little brother that he could not help loving. But the brandy tasted like graveside dirt on his lips as he admitted to himself that he no longer worried what the world would do to his brother; he worried what his brother would do to the world. Yes tonight he and the fictional doctor had much in common; out of the best of intentions they had created something that would be a living nightmare for the rest of their lives. And they only had themselves to blame.


End file.
